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The 6 T's
The 6 T's Strategy: The 6 T’s to Better Reading Comprehension Grade Level: All Targeted Population: All Learners Time: “In typical classrooms, it is not unusual to find that kids read and write for as little as ten percent of the day (30 minutes of reading and writing activity in a 300 minute, or 5 hour, school day).” In the classrooms that these studies were done in to find out how to make more effective readers, the researchers discovered that the classrooms that were effective had a much better ratio of reading and writing to all the other “stuff”. The researchers decided that classrooms with teachers that had a “50/50 ratio of reading and writing to stuff”. The researchers believe that this is an issue is more about less stuff vs. reading than what sorts of and how much of stuff because when stuff dominates instructional time, warning flags should go up for teachers. When it comes down to it in “less-effective classrooms, there is a lot of stuff going on for which no reliable evidence exists to support their use.” However, on the other hand “extensive reading is critical to the development of reading proficiency. Extensive practice provides the opportunity for students to consolidate the skills and strategies teachers often work so hard to develop.” Texts: “Simply put, students need enormous quantities of successful reading to become independent, proficient readers.” This means that students need to be presented and given the opportunity to read and perform with a “high level of reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension.” This means that students should be able to read a 100 word piece and not miss a single word for it to be considered an appropriate piece to practice their reading skills with. When given the opportunity to read passages that they can read perfectly opens up the opportunity for students to practice more complex reading strategies and be able to make those strategies became an automatic part of the reading process. This means that effective teachers need to work against the grain sometimes and reject plans that involve having all children reading the same material. By providing appropriately leveled reading materials, teachers see an acceleration of literacy growth in the group of lowest-achieving readers. Teach: This part of the strategy is focused on the importance of modeling and demonstrating of useful strategies that good readers use to students. Teachers that turn out good and effective readers use active teaching strategies that involve explicit explanation and direct teaching. In order to create effective readers in a classroom, teachers must show their students how to be effective; this means that teachers need to model the skills and thinking processes to their class. This includes showing students how to decode words, checking for understanding, and summarizing what was read afterwards. These concepts should be taught to students in multiple ways- whole class lessons, small groups, and individual students during one-on-one time when possible. “We have a wealth of studies demonstrating the power of active teaching, especially for children who struggle to learn to read and write. But for children to come to own the powerful strategies being presented they must have enormous successful practice in using the strategies independently.” Talk: When this study compared the difference between conversations in a typical classroom versus those of the exemplary classrooms there was a great difference in the kind of conversations that occurred. In the exemplary classrooms the teachers did a much better job of encouraging student talk; there was much more reported teacher-student as well as student-student conversations than in the “typical classrooms”. By encouraging purposeful talk in the classroom, conversations were focused on problem-posing as well as problem-solving. It was also seen that in effective classrooms, the conversations took on a new light, they were described as “more conversational than interrogational.” This means that the conversations were not dominated by the normal flow of the teacher asking a question, the student responding, and the teacher agreeing or disagreeing with the child’s answer. These exceptional classrooms were run by teachers who would ask open ended questions that would allow for more than one answer and that could create conversations and discussions. Tasks: It is important for teachers to present their students with the best assignments to fill their time with worthwhile activities. The researchers found that in the effective classrooms, students would sometimes work on one writing assignment for the upwards of ten or more days! In these classrooms, “Students read whole books, completed individual and small group research projects, and worked on tasks that integrated several content areas (reading, writing, and social students).” By having higher expectations and assigning longer and more complex assignments, the students were completing “more substantive, more challenging, and required more self-regulation than the work that has been more commonly observed in elementary classrooms.” By challenging students with these kinds of assignments it kept students interest and kept them more engaged. The other important thing to think about when coming up with assignments is allowing for students to be allowed to choose assignments that they wanted to do in an environment that is considered “managed choice”. Managed choice means that students have an unlimited choices, but it also means that it is less common Test: Finally, the last part T is for test. The teachers that were researched and stood out as exemplary were ones who graded students based on more than just their work but also on effort and improvement. This strategy of assessment differs from many other teacher’s assessment strategies because it allows for all students a chance to get good grades not just the students who excelled in achievement tasks. “This creates an instructional environment quite different from one where grades are awarded based primarily on achievement status. In those cases, the high-achieving students do not typically have to work very hard to earn good grades. Lower-achieving students often have no real chance to earn a good grade regardless of their effort or improvement.” The challenge (and benefit) of a teacher grading based on improvement and effort then comes in the fact that this requires teachers to know all their students and their abilities and be they have to be able to track students’ growth and progress. Source Allington, Richard. "The Six Ts of Effective Elementary Literacy Instruction."Reading Rockets. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Apr. 2014.